HR Blog

Do I Know You?

If you can’t get my name right, then why are we even having this conversation?

Imagine meeting someone that you want to impress and you call them the wrong name; you would be mortified, right? The same principles apply to electronic communication.

I get a lot of email solicitations. Some of them are quite good and some…well, not so much. The ones that really frost me are those that aren’t even addressed to me. If you’re reading my blog, you know that my name is Dee. It’s not Karen. It’s not AnnMarie. It’s not Judy. It’s certainly not Steven or Mark. It’s Dee. It’s not that hard – it’s the fourth letter of the alphabet.

Yet….

I still get solicitations addressedto other people. I just love it when not only is the name wrong, but then the email goes on to tell me what I need in my industry. Buddy, if you don’t know my name how on earth do you know my industry? Seriously?!

I get that mistakes happen, I really do. But that’s right up there with glaring typos on resumes and cover letters. Your first impression is a document that you didn’t bother to proofread? (We talked about resumes remember?) I’m sure the emails are generated using some sort of mail bot, but that’s no excuse for skipping a quick review before you hit send.

Just to be clear, I’m not one those people that you see on LinkedIn all worked up into a lather because they accepted a connection request and immediately received a solicitation. We all have to make a living, right? I’m also not one of those people that gets worked up because someone didn’t write some beautiful prose on their connection request to me. I see so many people on LinkedIn just railing about how terrible those types of connections are and I just want to tell them to get a grip already. We’re all on this journey of life together; surely you have bigger things to get tied up in knots about than a LinkedIn request that doesn’t “ahem” meet with your highness’ approval. Good grief.

When I get those solicitations I try to respond back and let the sender know I appreciate their time and that they thought of me but I’m not interested (assuming that’s the case). Have I ever missed one? I’m sure of it. I make no claims of perfection. But I do try and I think that counts for something. At least be respectful that someone is trying to make their way in the world.

It’s about dignity folks. Just simple dignity. Isn’t that all any of us are looking for?